On December 10th, 2011, I woke up at 4:45am, loaded my mount, Canon camera and the FS152 in the car and headed to the Windy Hill area in Skyline Boulevard.

My original plan was driving to San Francisco and hopefully catch a wide view of the Moon during totality with the Golden Gate bridge in the foregraound, but unfortunately, I didn't get up early enough, so I went for Plan B (Skyline).

Once there, by the road, there were a few cars from people who had also got up early (or simply hadn't gone to bed yet) to catch a glimpse of the eclipse.

I mounted the stuff,not even sure if I'd be able to reach focus with the adapters Ibrought with me (I had never put the Canon on the FS152).I didn't power up the mount, so I pointed at the Moon manually, gotfocus swapping adapters after a few "oh shut..." and captured a few shots of the eclipse.

I made however one bBig mistake: I didn't realize I was shooting at the highest ISO of thecamera, so noise was bad.... Because of that, and also because of the very low altitude of the Moon during totality (barely 10-15 degrees above the horizon), the image could not stand any deconvolution, so what you see is the image pretty much as it came out of the camera.

After totality and as the Moon was about to disappear behind a hill, Itook the camera out of the scope, did and shared some visual views,put the camera on a tripod with a camera lens, and shot this one:

Unimpressive, and not nearly as sexy as having the Golden Gate bridge or someother cool land features, but the whole event was fun and I had someinteresting talk with the folks that also went up there to watch theeclipse (and who were rather impressed with that big scope the FS152is :-). As one friend said, rather than a great picture, it's just a testimonial image: I was there, and this is the souvenir that I took with me. That's all!

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DATE December 10th, 2011 PHOTO Exposure: L: 1 x 0.3' Total: 0.3 seconds Focal: 1200mm

EQUIPMENT Imaging Scope: Takahashi FS-152 Camera: Canon 40D Mount: EM-400

SITE & CONDITIONS Skyline Highway 35, California Seeing: Poor Transparency: Poor SOFTWARE Processing: None

Sweeping through planet Earth's night sky, on September 3rd, 2001, Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) visited this lovely star field along the Milky Way in the constellation Vulpecula. Suggestively oriented, the colorful skyscape features stars in the asterism known as the Coat Hanger with the comet's tail pointing toward the southeast. Also known as Al Sufi's Cluster, the Coat Hanger itself is likely just a chance alignment and not a cluster of related stars. But compact open star cluster NGC 6802 does grace the field of view just right of the Coat Hanger, near the edge of the frame. Below naked eye visibility but approaching 7th magnitude in brightness, Comet Garradd has been a good target for binoculars and small telescopes. Still, bright moonlit skies this week will make the comet harder to spot. (Text from APOD).

Here's a different composition framing just the comet and the Coat Hanger:

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DATE September 3rd, 2011 PHOTO Exposure: L: 7 x 5', RGB: 6x3' each, Total: 1.5 hours Focal: 120mm

EQUIPMENT Imaging Scope: FSQ 106 EDX w/Reducer Camera: STL11k Guide Camera: StarShoot Autoguider Mount: EM-400

SITE & CONDITIONS DARC Observatory Seeing: Good Transparency: Very Good SOFTWARE Calibration/Stacking: DeepSkyStaker Processing: PixInsight & Photoshop

Is the moon really like this? Well, sort of. This is what happens when you take a picture of the moon, neutralize the colors (so the median of the values of R, G and B is the same) and then saturate the image. So in a way, yes, those colors are real, and the only difference is that they've been exaggerated a bit. This was the first time I attempted to take a "colored moon" photo, but I enjoyed it so much I expect to do some more in the future :-)

COMMENTS
Here's a mosaic of three images take with my C11 from my backyard. The focus is terrible for three reasons: 1) The seeing was terrible from my backyard. 2) The native focuser of the C11 really doesn't help - and that moving mirror didn't help either!. 3) In addition to 1 and 2, I didn't do a good job.

At a smaller scale, that's not apparent, but if you see the original image you'll see what I mean.

COMMENTS
This image of the moon is actually a mosaic of three separate images (the native focal lenght of the C11 just isn't able to capture a whole moon), and there really isn't much more to tell about it.

On the night of November 24th, 2007 I was lucky enough to catch a lunar halo right above my house, under a full moon. Of course I wasn't going to miss taking a picture of it, so I took my tripod, put my 400D camera on it, and took several shots. None of the shots was able to capture the entire halo, so what you see is a mosaic of two images.

In the image you can also see Mars (below the moon, out of the halo) and the star Capella (left, inside the halo).